The end is here. Finally.
The NCAA Division I Council on Wednesday voted to end the recruiting dead period, though it will not end immediately.
The current dead period runs through May 31, but the Division I Council has voted to allow recruiting to resume on June 1, The Athletic's Nicole Auerbach reported on Wednesday – though that won't be officially announced until the end of the council's two-day meeting on Thursday, Auerbach says.
The NCAA's Division I Council has approved a return to normal recruiting as of June 1, ending the dead period, source tells @TheAthletic, but this isn't officially official until end of Thursday's meeting.
— Nicole Auerbach (@NicoleAuerbach) April 14, 2021
More on what else will be decided today/tmrw: https://t.co/RVKLOHco9Z
It has been more than a full calendar year in which the dead period has been in place, dating back to March 13, 2020, but the NCAA has elected to finally put an end to that long stretch.
High school prospects, notably in the 2022 and 2023 classes, will be able to take official and unofficial visits to schools this spring – putting an end to the "self-guided visits" that many athletes have undertaken – and have face-to-face contact with coaches. There will, of course, certainly be rules and health guidelines in place for such in-person contact.
Many Ohio State commits, targets and players hoping to get offers have been planning on visiting Columbus in June, specifically for the weekend of June 4-6 for the Buckeye Bash 2.0, a mega recruiting weekend in which Ohio State's 2022 commits are gathering on campus. All 11 commits in that cycle– including five-stars Quinn Ewers, Jaheim Singletary, C.J. Hicks and Caleb Burton – are set to visit that weekend, and a long list of uncommitted top targets in both the 2022 and 2023 classes will be in town as well.
In addition to that big weekend, many high-level targets – including running backs Dallan Hayden and Nicholas Singleton, among many others – have already locked in official visits to Ohio State this summer.
Outside of the 2022 and 2023 cycles, five-star 2021 defensive end J.T. Tuimoloau is the biggest headliner of potential visitors this spring. He will now get his opportunity to follow through on his plan of making his five official visits to Ohio State, Alabama, Oregon, Washington and USC in June.
June and July are setting up to be two of the biggest, busiest months in recruiting history now that things are set to open back up, and the Ohio State coaching staff is certainly aware of that fact.
"We’re talking about a year-and-a-half since recruits can come on campus," Ryan Day said in late March. "That’s really two classes that haven’t been here. So they’re gonna be coming over the walls, so we’re gonna have to be smarter than all of that. For the 2022 class, we’re gonna be able to do some official visits here, which’ll be great to get them back on campus. We’re gonna wait to see what the university says about testing and that stuff when they come on campus.
“There’s also some talk about possibly having camps or even in-person evaluations here when they get here. So we’re waiting to find out to have some direction on what to do, and we’ll kind of go from there. But it’s kind of like, ‘hurry up and wait and see what’s gonna happen here.’ But we do have some contingency plans in place from talking to the families about getting them here because I know there’s a lot of people that are excited to get on campus and get around the program.”
